If you are a lover of an elite social media space twitter, I am sure you observed that Lieutenant General Kainerugaba Muhoozi was the most trending act in Uganda for over 24 hours.
Lt Gen Muhoozi did not dominate Ugandan twitter space for capturing Lord’s Resistance Army -LRA commander Joseph Kony neither did he unveil nor return dozens of people who had been politically kidnapped since 2020.
But he simply became the most talked about Ugandan on Monday even beyond the borders for demeaning Kenya’s armed forces that the Ugandan infantry he commands would capture Nairobi in not more than two weeks. “It wouldn’t take us, my army and me, two weeks to capture Nairobi,” he tweeted on Monday.
Muhoozi’s tweet was largely and widely described as reckless and probably aimed that crashing the cordial relationship Kampala enjoys with Nairobi. For those who cared to read Kenyans’ response, some went as far as asking their President Dr William Samoei Ruto to prepare the country’s forces for a possible military response in case Kampala invaded its sovereignty.
However, Muhoozi said he had scared Kenyans and later announced that he had talked to his father President Museveni. Known as the twitting General, Muhoozi urged Ugandans to wait for changes.
It took a few hours and the Uganda People’s Defence Forces -UPDF announced that President Yoweri Museveni had promoted Lt Gen Muhoozi to full General (4-star) which is the highest rank in the military but dropped him from commanding the infantry.
Gen Muhoozi was replaced by Maj Gen Kayanja Muhanga who was also promoted to three-star General (Lt Gen). But the turning around of events in the last 24 hours points to the possibility that Gen Muhoozi had earlier learned that his father had finalized plans to leave him with no serious position in the Army and decided to act cantankerous.
Other than threatening to capture Nairobi in 14 days, Gen Muhoozi has twitted supporting rebels fighting the Ethiopian government, supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and also promised to pay over 100 cows as dowry for the Italian Prime Minister.
Nevertheless, Gen Muhoozi has not received any summons or trial in the General Court Martial like many of his senior serving or retired officers who commented or gave dissenting views about the country’s political affairs. Lt Gen Henry Tumukunde was prosecuted for over eight years for commenting about politics which the military said was against its standing procedures for serving officers.